Adventures of a farmer's daughter in Hawaii

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GMO Free

As I was looking at my dad’s papaya seedlings the other day, it really made me realize how things in nature are a reflection of our own lives in many ways.

Every single papaya came from a single seed that was carefully bred and planted with care. My dad crossed his Kamiya line with the Rainbow papayas to get his customer favorite, Kamiya Gold. This little seed was carefully dried up and stored until it was time for planting.

The papaya seeds were then placed into vermiculite to help sprout them in the protection of his greenhouse. If it weren’t for this, the seeds would be attacked by slugs, snails, birds, and the elements at this early stage. As these seedlings grow larger and stronger, they are transplanted into larger pots, and eventually grow large enough to be field ready. Daily care is needed daily to ensure strong and healthy plants.

In addition to preparing the seedlings, the field must also be readied for planting. This in itself takes months to prepare. Cover crops are grown after each field is plowed back when the trees get too tall to pick. The crop itself takes months to grow. The soil must be plowed after cover crops have matured to encourage breakdown of the organic matter. It will take sometime for the bacteria to fully compost the cover crop to replenish the soil. Drip lines are also put in and the field is marked to set the proper row widths. Once the field prep is done, small holes are dug to place the foot tall seedlings into.

Once that field is planted, the trees will need fertilizer, pest control, and watering. Dead leaves are picked off the trees to prevent damage to the fruits and some are even thinned out to ensure enough space for each one to grow. After about a year, those trees will be ready for harvest.

I realized that our lives are very much lIke these plants. Everyone has the potential to develop and give back to others, just like the trees nurtured from the seed to plant. We all start off on the same but the experiences we have and the inputs we are provided or denied, shape us throughout our lives.

Like seedlings, people have some set basic needs to even start off right. Plants need medium, air, water, and sunlight to even start growing. Once it uses its own food store and grows larger, it needs other elements to grow and produce fruits. People are no different as they need the basics of food, water, and nurturing. Without these to start with, neither plant nor people will be able to thrive. The plants that don’t have the basic needs met will likely never be able to reach its fullest potential or will need extra care to make up for the effects not provided early on. It’s the same for people.

As the person matures, just like a plant, their needs change but they will still need the basics and even more to become productive. The trees will need more nutrients from fertilizers and some pest control to decrease the stressors on the plants. By providing added nurturing, the trunks and roots become hardier to withstand the harsh elements. People will need to learn skills via education and parental guidance and good role models to instill values that will keep them on the right path. There will be constant distractors that can eventually stunt the tree and hindering its growth. The added inputs set the foundation on which that person can excel upon just like the trees being able to provide delicious and nutritious fruits for years to come.

When living things aren’t given the basics early on and don’t have the right foundation to start from, these organisms can’t fulfill its maximal potential to become productive beings. As a farmer’s kid, I had everything I needed in life and learned the value of hard work, perseverance, and striving to always to do a good job. It is our nature to thrive, seek opportunities, do things better than before, and develop relationships. We as humans are always seeking to nurture each other as it comes from our instincts. Like my dad’s trees that had all the inputs needed early on and cared for throughout its life, they provide the sweetest and most quality fruits around as a result of using tried and true lessons learned over the years.

Hawaii is a hot bed for anti-everything activism. We have lots to be against here. If you live on the Big Island, you can be against geothermal energy, the Thirty Meter Telescope, and open ocean fish farming. Go to Maui and you can be against GMOs and sugar cane burning. After that, you can head to Kauai and join the anti-dairy and anti-GMO folks too. No matter what your interest, you’ll find something to be against. It gets pretty tiring that everything new is being blocked. Simply being staunchly against progress isn’t human nature.

The act of blockading things and denying our own instincts are counterintuitive. Many of us have a desire to help others in some form or fashion and to do things better. It’s in us to strive for that. However, like a plant being denied nutrients or a baby denied human touch and love, neither can ever fully meet its full potential if the basics aren’t provided. The nature of blocking biotechnology to farmers who are poor or use old chemicals to protect their crops keeps everyone else who depend on that farmer from having a productive and reliable food source. Halting the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea delays the funding of scholarships and revenue for education in the poorest county in our state. Using a nebulous term like sacredness to fight a battle shows they fight a war based in ideology and not one with a working and living vision for the future.

Without access to education, we all stand to lose when the children aren’t able to overcome the fearfulness of their parents. They won’t be able gain opportunities to rise out of poverty and the cycle continues in the next generation. Shutting down the sugar cane or biotech industry on Maui takes away from opportunities of hundreds of people who keep the lands in agriculture and erases a key link to our local roots. Relying on misinformation to achieve such goals is also against people who have a conscience and sense of caring of others. The anti-everything people accept misinformation, acts of vandalism, and threats against others who speak in support of advancement. They can only see a world of black and white and in concrete, literal terms because they have never been exposed to the world beyond their own eyes. Progress is frightening to those who live life through only what they read and see on the Internet or what their fellow family member tells them. The world is scary when you haven’t fully opened your eyes and actually learned about what’s happening with technology and research.

We are always learning lessons throughout our lives of what works and what doesn’t. We have learned to be more efficient and do much more with less. We use technology to achieve this. It is in our nature to continually ask questions and find answers to them. Those who choose to be willfully ignorant and don’t truly research what’s happening around us are like stunted plants who never fully produce anything tangible for others. We also desire knowledge and value education as a society where everyone has equal opportunity to achieve a higher goal and give back to our communities.

It’s time to stop and think about the anti-everything mentality. It is totally opposite of what the human spirit wants to become. In societies where this was crushed and it was not considered a value, have people flourished and led the world in helping others? Have these societies nurtured their people to willing give back and care for others? The truth is that the anti way of thinking has crushed the human spirit and by doing so, has people forgetting that those who live with freedom should use it for the betterment of others in this world. There is plenty of suffering around us and why should those with everything be the ones adding more to it. The sad thing is Hawaii is turning into a place where a loud minority are willingly crushing spirits and dreams of the few who have that desire.

We need people who are willing to go up and beyond what is the norm here in Hawaii. We can’t let naysayers with no strong vision for the future dictate policy here in Hawaii. They take away dreams and aspirations of our young people and close off minds with fear and unsubstantiated beliefs. Nor do these people ever offer facts since that will cause people to question their movement.

My dad said that we talk about the crabs in the bucket mentality thinking it’s the lowest ones pulling people down. He said it really is the top ones, the leaders, who are not fighting to get out of that bucket and lead people over and out beyond the comfort of that bucket. The mentality that science is propaganda and progress can be denied is what’s going to sink Hawaii’s ability to get anywhere in the future. How can we ever grow our base of innovators, problem solvers, and community contributors to make Hawaii better when being anti-everything is gloryfied? It’s just ain’t cool to protest and not have a real plan for everyone.

Even the early Hawaiian canoe voyagers knew that they just couldn’t jump in a canoe and paddle out aimlessnessly into the vast ocean. They studied the stars, weather, and ocean to gather knowledge and developed a plan. They even figured out the best design of a vessel to take them on this adventure. They planned this voyage with the intent of living in a new place by bringing along animals, plants, and other supplies to sustain them when they get there. A lot of thought and effort went into this plan before it was ever launched. As a result of good planning, cooperation, and leadership, the Hawaiians managed to make it here and establish their unique culture.

Humans are always striving to be at their best and get somewhere in life. My ancestors had that same idea which is what brought them to Hawaii. The ancient Hawaiians also did the same things when they headed out in their canoes. No one would have ever been here if our ancestors sat around protesting and never coming up with a real plan. The journey of getting to our destination and striving towards a vision didn’t start with protesting the thing of the moment. We are here because of a lot of thinking, nurturing each other, and leaders with the guts to inspire us to get somewhere. That’s the culture needed now.

Apparently, politicians must be reading my blog because I just received this letter a few days ago. Representative Tulsi Gabbard is clearly misinformed when she states that GE ingredients need to be labeled and she’s using taxpayer dollars to achieve this. (GE is a plant breeding technique, not an ingredient!). I’m not totally surprised that my own congress person is pursuing this as her own family has a vested interest in the health food market. She has also received many contributions from the industry that stands to benefit from this kind of legislation. Despite all of this, she’s not called a shill and is more of a real shill than me!

The more I started thinking about this right to know, I realize why I take issue with it. When people start demanding that the government be in charge of enforcing labeling of a product based on curiosity and not on evidence, it reflects upon a societal problem. It really absolves the individual from taking personal responsibility for learning the facts. The issue goes way beyond just the aspects of rights. It amounts to a loud bunch of people who already don’t trust the government to regulate labeling. I suspect that the labeling they want won’t magically gain their trust in any case.

There’s a lot of discussion that the right to know movement is being pushed by the millennials. This generation is at least two generations away from the farm and really haven’t been exposed to what it is really like to work hard and to start from the ground up. That’s is clear when you have anti-GMO leaders like Ashley Lukens, from the Center for Food Safety, proudly professing that she works a set schedule so that she can get her yoga hour in daily. Must be nice to have the luxury of that “me, myself, and I” time in since her crops don’t depnd on her. The sweat she makes helps only herself and doesn’t give back to anyone else.

Like Ashley and her GMOs means pesticides bit, the right to know folks are really quick to inconvenience everyone else for the sake of labeling GMOs. They demand that farmers have to completely change the way they grow and harvest their fields. It will cost them a significant amount of money to do this. Not only does it add more costs to farmers, but also to food manufacturers who have to revamp all of their labels. The government and the taxpayers will also be affected in needing to test or regulate the labels for accuracy. The papaya farmers have to purchase little labels and be sure it’s stuck on properly or risk getting a fine. Not only do farmers and food manufacturers have to modify their work but it will all land up costing the consumers, especially the ones who are most in need of affordable food. Many will incur some kind of cost in the form of time or money because of someone’s curiosity and refusal to learn the facts.

I think a lot of this may stem from the way our children are learning facts in school. There is a high amount of pressure for schools to score well on tests. My daughter exemplifies this when she shows me her homework and asks for the answer to be given to her for her test. Instead of thinking the task through to figure it out, it’s easier to just be given the answer than to think. As a mother who wants to enable my child’s critical thinking skills, I don’t give in to this. I walk through the process with her to provide here with a foundation to help her. Learning about life isn’t simply about getting an answer.

The world does not need more people who do not take responsibilty for their own learning. America was not made because of people sitting around protesting. The movers and doers were the ones to create their visions and dreams because they took initiative to do something. We live in a great country because of great leaders who demonstrated the values of hard work and sacrifices and inspired others to do the same. We have a reaped the benefits of those innovations. It’s sad in this day and age that these values are not encouraged by leaders like our own President to even Representative Gabbard. I just don’t get that sense of inspiration from our leadership at all. What do we teach our young people when we don’t listen to those doing the real work and choose to listen to the squeakiest wheels?

I get really irked with this kind of attitude pervading our society. Why are people not taking some responsibility for themselves? From the college student who takes our $200k in student loans to pursue a degree that could never land a career to pay for it, only to default on it. The information on the degree you’re pursuing is available and not doing your due diligence ahead of time costs everyone. It will take resources from those pursuing real careers who did their homework and kept their word to repay the loans.

This same absolving of responsibility is also seen in interns who tells their instructor that they didn’t learn a certain skill in school when asked to perform. Instead of actually initiating a simple question of how one can prepare for the internship, they simply take cop out of stating, “I didn’t learn that.” These people want to have their hand held to become skilled and are not able to take their schooling and figure out how to apply it in practice. That person tries to make it someone else’s problem that they didn’t take the time to learn how to apply the knowledge provided to them.

Even the anti-GMO professor at UH, Dr. Hector Valenzuela, shows the same behavior of not owning up to his actions and now stating that he’s the victim of harassment. He proudly joined along with the Babes Against Biotech and shamelessly Marched Against Monsanto in Waikiki. Neither he or any of the BAB members bother to tell their followers that Natural News or Dr. Mercola was not well vetted information. They simply stopped posting it when I pointed it out that they tout pseudoscience. Both Hector and Naomi Carmona never apologized or have ever owned up to all the harassment they incited against farmers like Dean Okimoto or even our state senators for the past few years.

Avoiding responsibility is clearly seen by the anti-GMO activists who have made hateful statements on the social media against anyone who speaks up against them. When I would across these uglies, I’d screenshot it and repost it. If they can say it, they should be held responsible for what they say and do. The funny thing is that when it’s reposted, these people call it slander. Excuse me but if you post it, own up to it or don’t even even post it. When it’s pointed out to them, they again try to justify their behavior by saying that the pro-biotech supporters have done the same so it’s okay for them to do it. I ask them for evidence of this and have yet to have them reply back with anything. (Apparently to the anti-anything crew, it’s a monkey see monkey do world, and it’s just not their fault.)

The worst thing about this right to know movement is that the backers of it are ready and willing to deny the basic needs of food to others. They feed people with illogical reasons as to why Golden Rice is not needed. I’ve seen some Hawaii GMO Free members say that vitamins are better or just grow carrots or leafy green to prevent vitamin A deficiency. If the answer was so simple, why hasn’t it been done yet? These people must not grow things either to realize why this isn’t feasible. I bet they don’t even have children to know why fortifying rice is the most viable option in these countries.

With so much information available to us, the right to know movement really amounts to people who really aren’t willing to truly do their homework on what is and isn’t modified. It’s way easier to be fed the answer in the form of a label than to actually sort through fact or fiction. This kind of thinking only discourages taking responsibility for one’s own behavior and encourages taking the easy route. Simply reading something on Google and joining a march fulfills their idea of saving the world. Your right to know shouldn’t mean imposing on those who are the professionals with the right credentials behind them to choose the best tools available. That right doesn’t give anyone a free pass at spreading misinformation and posting hateful stuff against farmers and scientists either. The right to know folks need to get off their butts and actually learn a thing or two from the right sources before they start asking others to bend over backwards for them.

One hour of yoga isn’t going to save the world, but dedicating your life to learning more about the world and seeking the truth is a much better investment for your own piece of mind and others that are impacted by your actions. Learning inspires others. Learning from those in the field is the best way to get an appreciation of the hardest workers. Demanding your right via protests and petitions only shows the world that a country of abundance is full of selfish individuals who care only for themselves and what they are eating.

The latest disturbing trend that I’ve been observing with the activists, whether it be an anti-vaccination or anti-GMO one, is stating that science is propaganda. This clearly tells me that either they don’t understand the scientific process or some of the basics or don’t quite understand what propaganda really is. Honestly, it’s just them being plain old lazy to actually put some brain power to actually think about what’s being said. There, I said the painful truth about it.

Most activists seem to not even understand what propaganda really is. As one can see from the definition, it’s politically motivated. The fact that the activists are attempting to influence laws without evidence to support such regulations creates a slippery slope as to the necessity of the laws to begin with. These folks are very effective and getting others to repeat the mantras of people are being sprayed, kids are being sprayed, birth defects, and the aina is being poisoned. It doesn’t matter if all the multiple tests and studies done show otherwise. It’s a fear based statements that the least informed tends to latch on to easily.

When these emotionally hot statements are repeated over and over, it becomes fact to people, irregardless of what the data points too. Propaganda needs no fact to back up what’s being said and it’s effective when it’s fear based as we have seen. Whether the message is vaccinations will cause autism or GMOs means pesticides, it scares people and puts them on the emotional high horse crusade to protect themselves against this perceived evil.

If one should ask for evidence, it’s against the unspoken code that you do not question or doubt what’s being said. The evidence that is provided only repeats the same statements and few people if any know how to skeptically question the sources and just believe. A crusade against something so bad cannot tolerate dissenters or doubters for that matter. It will utterly destroy the energy and emotion that drives this battle and endangers the stature of leaders who benefit from the numbers of people engaged in their movement.

A perfect example of this is Kauai County Councilmember’s statements on pesticide usage there. He repeated over and over that there was 18 tons being used. As a result, people repeated it but never questioned it. The reality was much different but the repeated statements became truth despite the facts that it was half as much. Facts don’t matter and nor does being honest with their followers also. He could have easily corrected them but refused to do so because he’d likely create doubt in many people’s minds. Kauai County Councilmember, Gary Hooser, created so much fear that his followers turned very ugly on the social media and in the communities. That likely got the level headed voters to put him lowest on the totem polem this past election.

When activists claim that, “There’s propaganda on both side,” they’ve just shown that they aren’t able to critically assess what’s being stated. Instead of researching out the facts and critically vetting sources, it’s way easier to shut down logic and critical thinking all together. Why bother doing the hard work to actually open your mind and learn when it’s easier to dismiss science as propaganda? It’s easiest to live in fear and on emotions than it is to step back and actually think. It’s also more fun to have more people on your side too.

Creating doubt in your followers is dangerous in an ideological movement. Questioning of the information is a threat to its very existence and can topple the leaders that perpetuate it. It simply can’t be tolerated. The next best thing is to now tell followers to just dismiss evidence all as propaganda. Forget intellectual honesty and considering that you just might be wrong about what you thought. Don’t bother doing any real research and use the statement, “Science is propaganda.”

Yeah, you said it and you can continue repeating those same erroneous statements because you’ve acknowledged that you refuse to attempt to think critically or logically about the issue. That is a good reason why those who think like that should not be involved in policy making. No logic and no critical thought invested in the process means harmful unintended consequences that affect everyone. Haven’t we already learned that with all the bad bills passed across our islands?

It’s breaking news that the Kauai anti-GMO law has been invalidated by Judge Kurren today. The law is pre-empted by the state law and cannot be enforced at the county level. Joan Conrow and Richard Ha both did great blogs today on the news.

As I followed some of the news links posted on the various Facebook pages from Hawaii News Now, Civil Beat, KITV4, and KHON2, the commentaries are so disheartening once again. I don’t consider this ruling a win in any case. The damage has been done towards Hawaii agriculture, farmers, scientists, and our communities. Our communities are not healed by this ruling that was started with a huge disinformation campaign by mainland based activists. We are still divided and people are still not well informed about the issues revolving around agriculture here.

There has been so much fear mongering and misinformation that the public has been made to be so afraid of things they just don’t understand. Bringing up they issue of biotechnology or even mentioning genetics or basic science turns people off as they have been indoctrinated to the belief that it’s “propaganda.” How can we move forward when the largest and loudest voices are the least informed and still trying to dictate law? These are the same people who don’t understand how laws are made with to begin with or how the legal system works and now are asking for the judge to be impeached or even harmed?!

Screenshot from the Babes Against Biotech Facebook page. Note the disturbing commentary below.

These activists aren’t about working together towards a common goal unfortunately. Just last week at a farmer’s rally on the Big Island, a long time GMO Free activist named Courtney Larson, was arrested and is being charged for disorderly conduct and other various charges. When farmers are trying to figure out how to move forward after this devastation, and are at their most vulnerable state, the activists show their true colors and it isn’t pretty or full of aloha. Is that what we need in Hawaii at a time when we have so many other issues to deal with and work through?

The activists politicians are also another group of people who are feeding this unaloha spirit in our islands. From the likes of Russell Ruderman and his fear mongering GMO articles, to Mike Gabbard sending me links to the debunked Seralini study, to Kaniela Ing and his associations with “home rule” and the SHAKA Movement, to Gary Hooser and his alliances with environmental activists, our leadership is failing us as a state. I’ve always been taught as a leader to check out your sources and do your research about the issue to base your decisions up and that you must use facts and evidence to move forward, not emotions or trends of the moment. The leaders’ jobs are to keep the community together and cohesive so that it can operate properly. When leaders like these choose to side with the loudest of the bunch but refuse to use facts or come to the table to discuss issues, it does no one any favors. They should also be doing the work of educating others with good information so fear doesn’t dominate the conversations. It’s pretty clear poor leadership has done a lot of damage in these recent years.

Judge Kurren has made his ruling and that has set the law today. Do we choose to accept this decision or continue fighting and completely wasting our time and energy on this issue that further divides the communities? Or do we move on and work on the actual problems that we face like our high poverty rate, education, traffic, the increasing elderly population, homelessness, food security, and so on? I hope that we move forward and actually set out to do something meaningful for the people in our communities and use our resources wisely to make it happen. That’s my hope and expectation!

I can’t tell you how many times I have been told, “If it’s not grown organically, then it’s poisoning the a’ina (land in Hawaiian).” The GMO Free activists keep making this statement over and over and people start to believe it. It is repeated over and over until it becomes a pseudo-truth that they all regurgitate at their social rallies.

From Big Island County Council Member Margaret Wille to Kauai County Council Member Gary Hooser and even Senator Josh Green, this is now stuck in the minds of the activists and seeping into the minds the general public. These “leaders” have people thinking that chemicals are bad and we have to avoid them at all costs. The activists then shout out, “I don’t want any chemicals on my food.”

I’m sorry to disappoint but everything in this world is made up of chemicals including us! It really bothers me that people are saying these kinds of things, not even realizing that this shows a clear lack of understanding of science. I sometimes wonder if the movement is not so much about being anti-science, but non-science. That really is a better descriptor of these folks when they make comments that show their chemophobia.

What a lot of the GMO free folks really demonstrate with these statements is that they really don’t understand the concepts about chemicals and toxicity. They automatically assume that if the chemical is derived naturally that it is safer and that is not the case. They also think that anything used on a biotech or conventional farm is very toxic just because it is called a pesticide. Little do they realize that just paying attention to what’s in our own homes, we have a lot of toxic things in our living quarters that work just like pesticides. It’s time to educate people a bit on this issue.

Toxic Talk

Before we go on, let’s talk about toxicity for a bit here. Here is the definition of it on Wikipedia:

What is important to note with the concept of this is that there is a degree to which something can be harmed by the substance. Certain substances like water and salt is vital to life but when taken in at high doses, it can prove deadly to organisms. This applies to nearly every substance that we might ingest or be exposed to. Like the ancient scientist Paracelsus noted, “The dose is what makes the poison.”

Ah, the dose that makes the poison is the key concept here. Toxicity is also measured in something called lethal dose (LD) and is usually expressed in a measure called the median lethal dose or LD50. LD50 refers to the amount of a substance it would take to kill 50% of the population of say rats or mice per milligram of substance to kilogram of body weight. It is an indication of the lethality of a substance. In general, the smaller the amount, the higher the lethality of the substance.

I decided to take yet another walk around my house to find “poisons.” I bet if many of the GMO free folks did the same walk, we’d all find the same things too.

My Kitchen of Death

I started in my kitchen to see if I had poisons lurking there. Sure enough, I found quite a bit of things that if taken in the right doses could be toxic to me. Take a look at what I found.

Right above my stove and purposefully added to food is a nice hefty, but toxic container of table salt or sodium chloride. A GMO free activist would never believe it but this is much more toxic than RoundUp any day. Table salt has a LD50 of 3000mg/kg vs. RoundUp at 5600mg/kg.

Eating small amounts of it makes food tastes great but too much isn’t good for us as we all know.

I’ve seen so many natural fallacy sites and lots of GMO Free sites touting baking soda as the chemical free way to clean. Please, baking soda is a chemical called sodium bicarbonate in technical terms. Its LD50 is 4200 mg/kg and is much more toxic than RoundUp also. If a small child were to consume just a few tablespoons of this, it would be extremely toxic and it’s stated right on the box.

Dishwashing soap is also considered a pesticide. When you go to the gardening stores, you can buy diluted dishwashing soap that’s sold as soap spray pesticides for the same price as a large bottle of it. Save money by making your own pesticides right from your own kitchen.

Some people have tried using the homemade recipe for weedkiller that uses dish soap along with some salt that is effective. That is likely much more toxic that the RoundUp you find premixed in the stores. That’s why it makes a great weed killer of all weeds!

I do hate bugs and will admit to using pesticides. This stuff works great to keeping the bugs out of my kitchen and foodstuffs. Who likes having roach infested cupboards? I’m sure many other GMO free folks have a can or two of bug spray available for the same reason. We live in Hawaii where cockroaches are the size of B52’s and we don’t believe in coexistence with them!

Now why would I put coffee here? Coffee contains a pesticide! Yes, indeed, caffeine does kill! How many millions of people consume coffee yet are fine?! Caffeine’s LD50 is at 192 mg/kg. Yes, it is much more toxic that RoundUp is! The GMO free folks drink this organically but fear pesticides! The irony of it all!

Chocolate chips indeed have some chemicals in it that is toxic, yet we consume it with no fear at all. The chemicals found in it are theobromine and caffeine. We all know that keep the dog out of chocolate or they will get sick and it is all thanks to this chemical. Theobromine has a LD50 of 1265 mg/kg and yes, it is more toxic than RoundUp! The amount of theobromine in chocolate chips is quite small so you’d have to consume a lot of it for it to be toxic.

Believe it or not but that hot sauce you douse your food in contains something toxic. That chemical is called capsaicin. It is naturally occurring and found in hot sauce, to kim chee, to even that muscle rub. Some people love eating this pesticide! It has a LD50 of 148.1 mg/kg to 161.2 mg/kg in rats, making this much more toxic than RoundUp.

The very things we give our children to make them well can also be toxic. I found a bottle of acetaminophen in my kitchen cabinet. The LD50 for this pain reliever is at 700 mg/kg for rats which shows that it is more toxic than the GMO free folks’ RoundUp.

I’m sure many parents have a bottle of this in their medicine chest. Ibuprofen has a LD50 at 800 mg/kg in rats making it also more toxic than RoundUp. I personally like using this to really help my kids feel better and know that it works but is also toxic at high doses. I’m sure other GMO free parents do the same and have no second thought about it when it comes to sick kids.

Some folks take these tablets daily not realizing that it is more toxic than that dreaded weedkiller. Aspirin, also known as salicylic acid, has a LD50 of 1360 mg/kg making it less toxic than iron and all the above pain killers listed.

Bathroom of Poison

There are a lot of potentially poisonous things found in my bathroom but oh, so necessary for cleaning or health purposes. Remember, that if used in the right amounts will make things toxic to us. Using these chemicals sparingly as needed actually does wonders for our home and bodies when needed.

The Garage of Gloom

I hate bugs in my house. I admit that I hate letting nature take its course in my living quarters. In Hawaii, the bugs will take over as it is their tropical paradise also. I have those horrible pesticides to stop letting nature take it’s course over my home. Am I afraid of these pesticides? Nope. Kills bugs so I love them.

When it comes to cleaning up after dirty kids, dogs, and an old person, I’ll be honest that going chemical free as the antis love to harp on, doesn’t cut it for me. Wiping down a toilet with vinegar and baking soda just does not do the job at all. It takes some good germ killers that if taken in too high of a dose, this stuff is toxic. I bet a lot of anti-GMO activists who marched had homes that had these chemicals in it! All bought at Longs CVS on sale!

I garden as a hobby for fun and yes, I use chemicals on my plants. These indeed are toxins when taken in too high of a dose but so necessary for my plants to grow happily. I give my gardenias a nice spraying of Volck’s Oil every few months to kept the sooty mildew that those pesky scales create. If I don’t spray it, I get no flowers. I also use snail and slug killer in my lettuce and greens boxes so that I have less worry about rat lungworm disease that is very dangerous for humans.

I am sure that other anti-GMO activists who have pets must have pesticides like these in their homes. With the warm weather all year long, the fleas and ticks love our beloved pets. I don’t believe in coexistence with these blood suckers so I kill them and keep them out of my home.

Dear golly goodness, I even feed pesticides to my pooches too. What an awful owner to be feeding poisons to my dogs! Well, I hate fleas and critters so the pooches have to eat these pesticide pills.

I love keeping my car shiny and sparkly and have yet to find chemical free things to do this. For now, I use my favorite resin glaze and Rain-X headlight polish to keep my car in tip top shape. I apply this directly to the car and my skin comes in contact with this stuff. Oh, the exposure to toxins! Hmm. Toxins or rust? I pick toxins to keep my car nice. I bet a lot of of antis do the same thing since I’ve seen them with some nice GMO fueled cars and trucks!

I like my clothes fresh and clean and a bit of bleach helps to accomplish this. It’s toxic in the right dose. It is also known as sodium and calcium hypochlorite. Its LD50 is 192 mg/kg making it very toxic indeed. Let’s not forget that that this is also used in food preparation, and even though it is synthetic, it is approved for use on organic food processing. We even drink it and even swim in it! It kills the germs that can make people sick which is why we use it.

Should you now be even more afraid of chemicals after finding out all of this? No. We rely on these chemicals for sanitation, food preparation, bug control, and other helpful reasons. Remembering that something is a toxin at the right does is what makes it important to remember. The more you know, the less you have to fear. If someone is making you fearful, cross check them and you will find a different story.

It’s kind of like how County Council Members like Gary Hooser and Earthjustice attorney Paul Achitoff will go to rallies and tell people that GMOs are poisoning them and it’s being shoved down peoples’ throats. Shortly after that, they sit together and have a GMO meal at a GMO restaurant. Get off the fear mongering bandwagon and question what’s being said and actually listen to the answer.